5 Effective Ways to Earn Money From Free Mobile Apps

Five Tips to Make Money With Free Mobile Apps

Why would anybody go to all of the trouble to develop a mobile app, invest in promotion, and then just give it away? They do it because there are plenty of ways to make money from free mobile apps. Free apps can be used to develop a marketing relationship that makes it much easier to sell in the future.

How Do Free Apps Generate Income?

App companies who hope to make money by giving apps away typically hope they can score as many free downloads as possible; that increases the chance of getting paid on the inside of the application. Consider some tested ways that free app makers use to earn an income from their free mobile applications:

#1. Offer Upsells Inside the Application

If you’d like to earn money from app development, you might consider giving them away and monetizing them from inside the app. Just consider the example of mobile app marketing example of Pokemon Go. Nintendo gave away the functioning app for free and still managed to clean up very nicely from in-game upsells.

#2. Offer a Premium Version

You might release a free version that only contains some of the functionality of the paid version. If your free version engages your audience, you can entice them with the benefits of paying for a full version of the software. You could also offer a limited trial for free and then ask for payment after the free trial ends.

#3. Sell Advertising

Just as you can sell advertising space on a website, you can also sell advertising within your mobile app. If you can find advertising that your own app audience is likely to respond to and generate plenty of downloads, you may find this is a fairly stress-free way to earn a living.

#4. Promote or Enhance Your Other Business

Both online and offline vendors use mobile marketing apps to promote their other businesses. For instance, Amazon has mobile apps that consumers can use to make physical or electronic purchases. You don’t need to pay for HBONOW, but it’s pretty useless without a subscription.

#5. Use the Free App to Collect Subscribers

Do you want to collect email addresses or cell phone numbers for an email- or text-based subscription? You might offer a free app as a lead magnet in order to help you grow that list. With good mobile marketing app engagement, you can even use the app as a way to communicate directly with your audience. For example, you might have some sort of financial app developed to help collect subscribers for your financial planning firm.

Do You Have Other Ideas to Generate Money From a Free Mobile App?

This list isn’t meant to include every possible method that companies use to make money from free applications. Instead, it’s intended to spark your own creative process and help you figure out the best route for your own project. If you have any great ideas, you might submit them in the comments.